700 Young People, A Year to Remember

What a year! In the past 12 months, BalletRox provided weekly dance instruction to 700 students — and that’s not all.

Thanks to our passionate funders, supporters, staff and friends, BalletRox and our talented students reached new heights in 2016-2017. Here are a few highlights:

In March 2017, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded BalletRox an Art Works grant for our community dance program at Spontaneous Celebrations! With this grant for arts education, “BalletRox is distinguished for meeting the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and the strengthening of communities through the arts.”

Our amazing young leaders in the Youth Council were busy throughout the year assisting in dance classes, writing the script for our winter recital, and choreographing Caribbean Soca and Nigerian dances to perform at the Wake Up the Earth and Dance for World Community festivals, which attract over 30,000 visitors in Jamaica Plain and Cambridge.

Beginning in September 2016, we returned to several Boston Public Schools (BPS), including the Curley K-8, Hennigan K-8, and Mather Elementary Schools for our 2nd, 3rd, and 5th years respectively, providing 600 BPS students with weekly, in-school dance education. New offerings this year included Latin dance and several PACE Autism classes–adaptive/integrative dance.